the fellowship among those without kin
by ahsokatanos
Summary: the man she's heard so much about pays her a long-overdue visit.


_[Wherein the man she has heard so much about pays her a long-overdue visit.]_

"SO you're his father?" Rey asks dryly, stifled curiosity in her chirping voice. A wrinkle forms on her upturned nose, puzzlement etching along her eyebrows as she shifts her position upon the soft grass, a palm running over the blades.

Anakin clicks his tongue against his teeth. "Everyone gets around to asking that question at one point in their lives."

"But are you?" She asks again, eyeing the ghost (who hardly looks like any ghost at all) that sits beside her. He's young, no older than twenty-five (which is not what Rey had anticipated) with waves of soft brown hair brushing his shoulders and blazing eyes that survey the horizon beyond the cliff's edge. Rey nudges his boot with her toe, hoping to prompt his answer as well as test whether or not her touch will pass through him as if he is mist. It doesn't.

"Yeah, kid," Anakin chuckles. "I am."

"You're also Darth Vader. And Ben's grandfather." She pauses. "And I'm not a kid."

Anakin looks at the younger girl, contemplating the fact that he is two generations older than she, and they appear the same age. Just as aggrieved, too. The freckles on her nose remind him of a younger Luke. Her peculiar hairstyle of Leia. "I was. I am. And you _are_."

Rey's face scrunches again. "Not really." Hands pick deftly at a wildflower that grows between her legs. "How come you're here? Talking to me?"

Anakin watches her, noticing how she plucks at whatever is in her reach when she doesn't know what to say. "'Cause you need all the advice you can get. You've got a government to overthrow, after all. And let's just say Luke hasn't aged as gloriously as I have."

Rey snorts. "I'll tell him you said that."

"Wouldn't be the worst thing he's heard." Eyes wander back to the cliff edge. "I didn't expect him to agree to train you."

Her eyebrow arches as she draws her knees to her chest. "How come?"

"Ben . . . put him through a lot."

They fall silent for a while, listening ill at ease to the gray waves sloshing against the cliffs a hundred feet below them. The two are attuned to silence. Neither mind it.

But soon, Rey can keep it in no longer. She takes in a breath, fury licking at her insides as she remembers Kylo Ren and remembers Finn and Han and the Republic and every innocent life that has been unrightfully taken and she is livid—

"I really despise that grandson of yours. Real sithing nasty _git_ , if you ask me."

"Couldn't have chosen better words myself. But watch that anger, or you'll end up like him." There is painful irony in his voice.

"Why haven't you interfered?"

"Not my place."

"Something tells me that never stopped you before," she accuses.

"Well, the man who strut around with that attitude nearly ripped apart the whole galaxy."

Rey scoffs. "'Nearly.'"

He shrugs, realizing she'd caught the alteration. "Eh, helps ease my conscience. Where'd you grow up?"

She tilts her head at the abruptness of the question. "Why?"

"Just wondering."

Rey purses her lips, realizing how chapped and flaked they have become. She concentrates on that for a moment, and not on Anakin's unfaltering gaze that seems to be burning holes into her as she pieces together a response. She finally exhales in grudging defeat. "Jakku. Big 'ole dust ball in the middle of nowhere. Living hell. But it was home."

Anakin rests his elbows on his knees, biting the inside of his cheek. "Sounds like Tatooine." His chest fills with the same bitterness that rises every time the name of his home planet leaves his tongue. He peers at Rey and decides that she has the same tiredness in her face, the same weariness of the desert in her eyes. Like Luke. Like him.

"I was a scavenger." She says distastefully.

"I was a slave." He replies with equal bite.

Silence again, as if the simple acknowledgement of their past lives is hurtful enough to steal away their voices. Rey grows restless again.

"What am I supposed to do?" She asks despairingly. "With Ren. He—he—well, I suppose you already know what he's done." There's malice in her voice that Anakin would never have expected. "Han Solo—"

"—Don't," he cuts her off sharply, "remind me about the smuggler." A sigh, a hand running over his bronze face. Rey notices the burn scar cutting through his right brow bone. She makes a note to ask him about it. "Kriff, as soon as Ben killed him . . . the Force didn't know what to do. It lost so much in such a burst of time. Leia felt it. Luke felt it. You know what it's like to feel both your kids' hearts breaking at once?"

Rey's eyes fixate on the ground. "No."

"Pray you never do." He sighs again, stretching out his legs indecisively. "As for my grandson . . . he's an imbecile. But he's a dangerous imbecile, and he needs to be set straight. And that's my job, not yours. _Your_ job is to kick his ass into the next system," Anakin grows serious again. "I think you're owed that much. I know he hasn't been very . . . friendly to you."

"Delicate way of putting it." Rey sneers at the memories of every interaction she's had with Ren. She remembers the way he abused the Force to get what he wanted, the savagery in his black eyes illuminated by the bloody glow of his lightsaber. She knows she hates him. Hates him with every quivering fiber of her being. She shouldn't. She knows in her steady heart that loathing for the fallen Solo child will hurt her more than him. But the delight of abhorring him is undoubtedly tempting . . .

 _A Jedi shall never . . ._

"Like I said," Anakin interrupts her thoughts deliberately, sensing the frustration emanating from her very skin. "Watch that anger. No, don't try to deny it—all that underlying bitterness isn't going to remain underlying for long if you don't control it properly."

She turns and narrows her eyes at him very incisively. "Says _you_."

"Hey," a ghostly smile spreads over his ghostly face. "'Least I've got experience. Besides, I can always be used as an example of what _not_ to do."

Even Rey has to laugh at this, her eyes crinkling happily like Anakin thinks they ought to—after all, she is only what? Nineteen? It's odd, he thinks, that a smile seems so foreign upon her face. Almost immediately, however, the giggle fades, and her scowl returns, and the lightheartedness flees. Her fingers find another wildflower to rip up.

"He's going to come for me," she says softly. "I know he is. I'm not going to be able to stop him. And he'll bring his Knights. And he'll be bloodthirsty. And I can't stop him."

She is not afraid for herself. She is afraid for the galaxy that has been dropped on her narrow shoulders, that for years had not had to carry any head but her own. She supposes this is what Anakin and Luke must have felt like when the torch of heroism was thrust into their hands as it had been hers. Shaking, unsure hands. But she grips it just the same.

"You can." Anakin promises her.

"But what if I can't?" _What if I cost people their lives?_

"Then you fail. And you try again. And again and again until your chances are spent."

"He'll kill me."

"He couldn't before," Anakin shrugs dismissively, which manages to both reassure and infuriate Rey all at once. "He can't now. I'm confident in that."

She is growing annoyed. She had expected him to share with her his endless combat experiences, his tactics, techniques, the best ways to _win_. And yet here he is, offering her vague advice that encourages _failure_ , something Rey has never been able to afford. Not on Jakku, not on Starkiller Base, and certainly not now. She sets her jaw and places her palms on her knees with an exasperated huff, eyes narrowed with suppressed anxieties and rising defense mechanisms. She closes her eyes but finds no peace, for the souls of billions and billions of those both human and nonhuman dance before her vision, taunting her, begging her for salvation, screaming, jeering, cursing, telling her she is incapable. She feels nausea churn her stomach, cold, chilling fear snaking through her body like a serpent, glittering black eyes hunting for something to strike, hunting for her heart, her heart . . .

"You can't stop people from dying, Rey." Anakin tells her quietly, pain in his voice that he is struggling to conceal. "Believe me. Any efforts to prevent it . . . will make it worse."

"But I can't just stand by and let Ren destroy entire systems!" She cries passionately.

"Call him Ben."

" _What_?"

" _Call him Ben_ ," Anakin says more clearly, a knowing and sardonic smirk pulling on his lips. "It'll distract him, shake him up." And then he's silent for a few moments, he just looks at her, something like a mixture of empathy and reluctance on his face that Rey cannot interpret.

"I visited you for a reason. He's coming today." Anakin demurs. Rey's blood becomes ice, but she nods stiffly, wordlessly accepting her role. "And he's bringing his Knights. And he is bloodthirsty. And you will stop him." Suddenly, Anakin grins a reckless and frightening grin that Rey suspects used to be plastered over his youthful face constantly. "And after you grind his face into the dust, he deals with _me_."

He rises to his feet, and she does as well, and they watch the slate gray sea churn angrily against clusters of smoothed rock. The silence is almost soothing.

"Thank you." Rey says softly. And she means it.

"I'm here when you need me. May the Force be with you."

Rey smiles, her nose wrinkling, and Anakin knows she means it. He dips his head in farewell, and when Rey blinks again he is gone.

SHE finds Luke standing at the peak of a cliff that stretches towards the sky, his eyes fixated upon a pack of eight prowling figures draped in darkness and hatefulness. Rey follows his gaze, anticipating a surge of icy fear as she lays her sights upon the advancing pursuers. But the terror does not come. Rather, a vicious wave of righteous anger engulfs her, and she is infuriated that Kylo Ren, the disgraced betrayer of the light, has dared to step foot upon the sacred haven the last of the Jedi have chosen, dared to blacken its peace with his presence. She feels her jaw tighten, and she turns her gaze to her Master. She notices that his eyes resemble Anakin's almost perfectly, and she is comforted somehow. Gradually, the hammering of her heart steadies.

"Are you ready?" Luke's aged voice asks her gravely. She cannot see his lips move beneath her unkempt slate-gray beard.

Rey sucks in a breath, smiles softly as a gust of wind tumbles over her, gracing her arms, her face. "I am." She lifts her chin, glowering down at the familiar towering figure of Ben Solo. He has chosen his battle.

And she will be waiting.


End file.
